India to meet tax collection target: Modi Govt

New Delhi, Feb 10: The central government on Wednesday said that it will be able to achieve its direct and indirect tax collection targets for 2015-16.

According to the Ministry of Finance, it will be able to meet the revenue collection targets without any shortfall.

Further, the ministry disclosed that up to January 31, 2016, indirect tax collection grew by 33.7 percent, while direct taxes grew by 10.9 percent.

"As against the annual budget estimate (BE) target for tax collections of Rs.14.49 lakh crore, the government has received Rs.10.66 lakh crore, which is 73.5 percent of the BE target," the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry estimated that it might be able to achieve a surplus of Rs.40,000 crore over and above the BE target for indirect taxes collection. However, the ministry also predicted an equal shortfall of direct taxes collection.

"However, both direct and indirect tax collection put together, we expect to meet the annual BE target of revenue collections for the current year without any shortfall," the statement said.

Indicative of new investment in the private sector, revenue under customs duty collections from electrical machinery grew by 34.4 percent and other machineries by 27.8 percent.

In services tax category, against an average collection growth rate of 27.2 percent, banking and financial services rose by 44.6 percent. Tax growth rate for work contract services was 39.9 percent and 41 percent in the case of goods transportation services.

"These are also indications of high level of economic activities taking place in the economy and seems to be commensurate with the growth rate projections for the FY 2015-16 as announced by the central statistical organisation (CSO) two days back," the statement added.

IANS